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SMF Keeps Crashing

Name: Guz
Country:

Comments: Hello, you've worked on my forum for me before. I need to get you to do some maintenance on it again.

Everyday, I am getting tables crashing and need of repair. SMF Sessions, SMF_Topics, etc. I need this thing to run smooth. What information do you need from me to get started?

Crashing SMF

Thanks for contacting us.

Please make a backup of what you have now and then send login info for; SMF Admin / Server FTP.

SMF Keeps Crashing Gaming Video & Issues Computer

Name: Guz
Country:

Comments: I have generated a full backup now. Attached [received] are some documents of some of the errors I've been getting. Sometimes several times per day. Maybe they'll help. I'm not sure if the problem is with the board, or the host.

Crashing SMF

You are using an outdated version of PHP you are also using a poor version of SMF and should move over to version 2, however you have a bigger problem:

Something may not right at the hosts end. Looking through your logs you had massive error log files that I had to remove.

Then when I attempted to repair your SMF messages table it crashed. When I attempt to restart your server it crashes too. Right now it is moving dreadfully slow and it might be that there is a bad node on the host. Please verify with your host about their resources and get back to me.

[Update to above after host fixed crash: DDOS attacks and search engine bots crawling site]

OK thanks, I'm not certain that is the problem. It may be back but if I go now and perform and optimize and it crashes then my advice is to upgrade to SMF 2 and also get a better version of PHP. The drawback is any current mods you have will be lost or needs to be reinstalled.

If you do not want to do that then I will need to attempt to tweak and monitor it for now. Regardless, please make a full backup now and label it "After crash" So we can keep track. Please confirm which step you want to take.

Crashing SMF

Name: Guz
Country:

Comments: Here's the problem with going to SMF2. I would lose all the topics / posts, classifieds, the ads, Google adsense, gallery, etc. Would it be basically starting from scratch?

Correct?

What are the chances of reinstalling those mods to get it all back to working as normal?

SMF Keeps Crashing

After changing your firewall, upgrading your PHP, readjusting your SMF, getting them to install [..] and so forth the issue seems to be that your database has grown to be huge. You may actually need a combination of more memory AND SMF 2. However we can try just SMF 2 first as the code makes better use of the database than version 1.

If you go with SMF 2:

You do not lose any topics or posts.

You MAY not lose gallery or classifieds if there are version 2 editions of them by the same author.

You definitely will not loose Adsense since that is just a matter of reinstalling it.

Any other mods you have now will be lost and then you can consider if they are really necessary.

Regardless, to what you decide you should make a full backup now as the site is now it is fully optimized and it is the SMF code and huge database that is the cause for concern.

SMF Crashing

The Resolution

After many days of work this job was solved. As it turns out there was a lot more to it than simply updating the software. The following happened / was found:

1. The server was hacked and someone placed a script to be called constantly to a Russian site
2. There were numerous files on the server that the owner did not know how they got there: scripts and executable software!
3. The forum itself has over one million posts and the current hosting passage was inadequate to deal with the load.
4. People were constantly leaching to files on the server.
5. The host had a bad node which we had to call them on.
6. The server's firewall, security, handlers and inbuilt software were not up to date.

Sometimes when it comes to SMF software trouble the problem may not actually be the software!